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Le Goubernement Le , 1924, photograph by Isabey, All Isabey, by photograph , 1924, 1) Marie Vassilieff & Jean for Börlin costumed Vassilieff Marie 1) Rights Reserved, Bernès Claude collection Liv Schulman, still from 2) Bal Olympique 2019 © ADAGP courtesy de l’artiste, 2019, A Day With Marie Vassilieff From May 16 to July 21, 2019 at the Fondation des Artistes From May 17 to July 20, 2019 at the Villa Vassilieff

Curated by Mélanie Bouteloup and Émilie Bouvard

A tribute to Marie Vassilieff in a two-folded exhibition At Fondation des Artistes – Nogent-sur-Marne (MABA, Maison nationale des artistes, Bibliothèque Smith-Lesouëf) : Mercedes Azpilicueta, Carlotta Bailly-Borg , Yto Barrada, Michel François, Christian Hidaka, Laura Lamiel, Mohamed Larbi Rahhali, Anne Le Troter, Flora Moscovici, Émilie Notéris, Thu-Van Tran, Marie Vassilieff Opening Wednesday, May 15 Press visit at 3pm / Opening from 6pm to 9:30pm Shuttle departing from Paris, Place de la Nation At Villa Vassilieff – Paris : Liv Schulman - Le Goubernement This exhibition is conceived with the support of the grant ADAGP - Villa Vassilieff, in partnership with Bibliothèque Kandinsky, MNAM-CCI, Centre Pompidou Opening onThursday, May 16 Press visit at 5pm / Opening from 6pm to 9pm LIV SCHULMAN The Villa Vasillief invites artist Liv Schulman to engage with the entire LE GOUBERNEMENT exhibition space to present her new series of films:Le Goubernement. This six-episode fiction imagines the destiny and work of women, lesbian, queer, trans and non-binary artists who lived in Paris from 1910 – 1980. Le Goubernement puts forward a narration of engaged art and a new way of telling the story –– not through retracing falsely universal events, fates or linear movements, but by creating stories that bring together multiple stories, images, thoughts, languages and sensations. The Goubernement is not a realistic film, a period fiction, or a rational history –– it is a film where speech, images and forms of words become characters. For Liv Schulman, this film was an occasion to create new representations of female, lesbian, queer, trans and non-binary artists; of images, not constructed in an oppositional vacuum (one man, one woman etc.,) but elaborated autonomously, outside the forms of phallocratic discourse. The episodes traverses and overlay over 70 years of history and hosts the stories and fate of artists that were erased from the great twentieth century modernist narrative, such as Maria Vassilieff, Esther Carp, Maria Blanchard, Carol Rama, Claude Cahun, Suzanne Malhberbe, Marcelle Cahn, Pan Yuliang, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Shirley Goldfarb, Germaine Richier and Françoise Adnet. Real stories and anecdotes from the lives of these artists mix with fiction in temporalities that interweave and amalgamate into a dubious present. There are more than forty-five characters who are played by seven actresses and artists: Eden Tinto-Collins, Agathe Paysan, Catherine Hargreaves, Chloe Giraud, Manuela Guevara, Viviana Méndez Moya (Curtis Putralk) and Nicole Mersey. As often in her work, Liv Schulman does not elaborate a linear, rational, logical story—rather, the artist proposes a collective construction of the characters that is the result of the process of practice, during the shooting; the rehearsals; and improvisation with the actresses. Here, identities circulate, evolve and sometimes dissolve, the characters are sometimes played by several different actresses, sometimes an actress plays several roles at one time. This circulation of the very notion of identity, and its social and psychological construct, is at the heart of the artist’s inquiry. Through a fictional historical revision, Le Goubernement undermines the official narratives of the triumphalist histories and proposes a new history of feminist art, one that allows all liberties, to the point of absurdity.

Le Goubernement, 2019

Team :

Director : Liv Schulman Camerawomen : Ariela Bergman Liv Schulman: Le Goubernement is conceived with the support Ingénieuse son : Marion Leyrahoux of ADAGP‑Villa Vassilieff grant, in partnership with Bibliothèque Aide réalisation : Pauline Ghersi Kandinsky, MNAM‑CCI, Centre Pompidou. Costumière : Carla Magnier Scripte : Sophie Prinssen The team of Le Goubernement would like to thank: Actress : Le Conseil National de l’Ordre des Architectes Eden Tinto-Collins, Agathe Paysant, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers Catherine Hargreaves, Chloé Giraud, AGITAKT studio Manuela Guevara, Viviana Méndez Moya Le musée Bourdelle (Curtis Putralk) et Nicole Mersey La Fondation des Artistes LIV SCHULMAN Liv Schulman was born in 1985. She grew up in Buenos Aires (Argentina). She lives and works in Paris. She studied at ENSAPC, Cergy, at Goldsmith University of London (UK), at UTDT (Buenos Aires). In 2018 she won the 20th Fondation Ricard prize and the ADAGP-Villa Vassilieff grant. Liv Schulman recently took part in the Biennale de Rennes en 2016, in the series of exhibi­ tions­ at the Galerie, Centre d’art con­tempo­ ­ rain de Noisy–le-Sec in 2017, at the National Gallery (SMK) Copenhagen), at Phakt Rennes, at CCK Buenos Aires, at Alt Cph (Copehangen). She has had solo exhibi­ tions,­ including SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017), Piedras Gallery, Buenos Aires (2018), Zoo Galerie, Nantes (2017), Big Sur Gallery, Buenos Aires (2015), at the Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo (2015). She pub­lished the Infinite Bet books with the RSS publishing­ house in Copenhagen, « Que faire avec Liv Schulman? » with Inmixtion Books Marseille, El Metodo Covensky and El Camino del CNTRL with Tammy Metzler pub­lishing house in Buenos Aires.

ABOUT ADAGP ─­ VILLA ADAGP & Villa Vassilieff, sharing common voca­tions - working closely VASSILIEFF GRANT with artists, high­lighting visual her­itages and art his­tory - co-cre­ated a research pro­gram that aims at devel­oping the work of an artist on the cir­cu­la­tion and repro­duc­tion of images, in rela­tion to the research on the Marc Vaux archive led with Centre Pompidou. This research grant will enable artists to under­take the pro­duc­tion of new works in a con­text favor­able to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge. This pro­gram is con­ceived as an artistic research plat­form ded­i­cated to the exper­i­men­ta­tion of non-linear models of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion and distri­ bu­ tion­ between researchers, contem­ po­ rary­ artists, associ­ a­ ­ tions, cultural­ insti­tu­tions and the gen­eral public. This research can be part of the field of art (rereading of art his­tory, exploring unknown and marginal­ized life jour­neys, reflecting on the actual pro­duc­tion of images...) but also in the wider field of the pro­ duc­tion of images in a world sat­u­rated with infor­ma­tion (polit­ical, eco­nomic, sci­en­tific, jour­nal­istic...). The 20,000 euros of this grant are intended for cov­ering the artist’s fees, their pro­duc­tion budget, the costs of sup­porting their pro­ject and (if nec­es­sary) their accom­mo­da­ tion costs in Paris.

ABOUT MARC VAUX Villa Vassilieff is cur­rently devel­oping a con­ver­sa­tion with the & CENTRE POMPIDOU Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris, to invite researchers and artists to engage in dia­logue with the Marc Vaux Archive. Marc Vaux, a figure of Montparnasse, pro­duced more than 250 000 photographs,­ which are currently­ held in the collec­ ­tion of the Centre Pompidou. They provide a new per­spec­tive on the social life of art-works and artists – famous and unknown – that he photographed­ between the 1930s and the 1970s. In 2016, the Centre Pompidou began under­taking the dig­i­ti­za­tion of the Marc Vaux archive: a mam­moth task, with many issues at stake con­cerning con­ser­va­tion and preser­va­tion, but also histo­ ri­ og­ raphy,­ museology­ and classi­ fi­ ca­ tion.­ How can one approach this archive today, in all its rich com­plexity? What is it in the images of Marc Vaux that con­siders our pre­sent? Liv Schulman, still from Le Goubernement, 2019, courtesy de l’artiste, © ADAGP 2019

Liv Schulman, still from Le Goubernement, 2019, courtesy de l’artiste, © ADAGP 2019

Liv Schulman, still from Le Goubernement, 2019, courtesy de l’artiste, © ADAGP 2019 A DAY WITH MARIE VASSILIEFF The Fondation des Artistes and the Villa Vassilieff join forces to pay AT FONDATION DES ARTISTES a tribute to Marie Vassilieff. At the beginning of the 1910s, the artist AND VILLA VASSILIEFF moved in a studio 21 Avenue du Maine, and spent the last years of her life, from 1953 to 1957, at the Maison nationale des artistes in Nogent- sur-Marne. A day with Marie Vassilieff borrows its title to A Day with Picasso (1997), a book by art historian and engineer Billy Klüver, in which, thanks to a series of pictures by Jean Cocteau, he tries to reenact an afternoon of Picasso’s wanders in the streets of Montparnasse with Marie Vassilieff, among others. A tribute to Klüver’s methodology, this exhibition however turns our gaze away from Picasso to examine a protagonist almost on the fringe of the official history of art: Marie Vassilieff. Marie Vassilieff was a key artist of Montparnasse in the first half of the 20th century: for her plastic works and her charismatic role as a mediator between Parisian artists, intellectuals and critics in the 1910s-1930s. In her life and work, Marie Vassilieff distinguished herself by a constant desire to decompartmentalize domestic and public space (she turned her studio into an academy and then a dining hall), fine arts and applied arts (she cared as much about her pictorial works as her dolls, theater sets and bottle covers). Artist, woman and stateless, Marie Vassilieff is resolutely contemporary in her research, artistic approach and life. The exhibition takes a fresh look at this federating artist, which art remains too little known. To that end, author Émilie Notéris wrote a text about her role in the history of feminist art. Her essay is used as the common thread of the exhibition, which gathers about ten contemporary artists invited to open a dialogue with the work of Marie Vassilieff, imagine fictional encounters with the Russian creator or make references to her practice. Contemporary art interventions and works by Marie Vassilieff borrowed to her passionate collector Claude Bernès are displayed in the space of the Fondation des Artistes in Nogent-sur-Marne, which, for the first, is entirely dedicated to the exhibition. It also includes the recently renovated Smith-Lesouëf Library, which will reopen for the occasion; as well in the Villa Vassilieff, in the heart of Montparnasse.

ABOUT FONDATION Since 1976, the Fondation des Artistes (ex FNAGP) has been DES ARTISTES supporting fine artists, from school graduation to the end of their career. Present at every strategic step of an artist’s life, the Fondation des Artistes supports art schools, gives production grants, promotes creation in its contemporary art center, the MABA, contributes to the promotion of artists abroad and provides studios and homes to ageing artists at the Maison nationale des artistes. Unique in its kind, economic model and range of activities, the Foundation has set for mission to foster artistic creation with means than come from rental incomes, donations and endowments. Jean Börlin de dos en costume de «crabe» conçu par Marie Vassilieff pour leBal Olympique, 1924, photograph by Isabey, All Rights Reserved , Musée de la Danse de Stockholm et collection Claude Bernès collection Marie Vassilieff, Costume Arlequine pour le Bal banal, 1924, Photograph by P. Delbo, All Rights Reserved, Claude Bernès Collection

Marie Vassilieff, Poupée Ballets suédois, 1927, Claude Bernès collection Marie Vassilieff dans son atelier du 21 avenue du Maine, 1922, photograph by Trampus agency, All Rights Reserved, Claude Bernès collection ABOUT VILLA VASSILIEFF Bétonsalon is a non-profit organization created in 2003. It manages two sites: Bétonsalon - Centre d’art et de recherche and the Villa Vassilieff, two cultural organizations of the City of Paris, labeled Centre d’art contemporain d’intérêt national by the ministry of Culture.

Villa Vassilieff, located in the Montparnasse district, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, aims at reviving the history of the place as a former studio by inviting artists and researchers to take a contemporary look at its heritage. The programming of the Villa Vassilieff focuses on little-explored resources and aims at rewriting and diversifying histories of art. With the support of its main donor Pernod Ricard, the Villa Vassilieff proposes the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, a residency program that invites four international artists, researchers or curators every year. The Villa Vassilieff also collaborates with museums, like the Centre Pompidou, and institutions to offer artists research and residency grants.

Villa Vassilieff BD DU MONTPARNASSE 21 av. du Maine 75015 Paris tél. : +33.1.43.25.88.32

AVENUE DU MAINE [email protected]

Open to the public, from Tuesday to Saturday

RUE DE L’ARRIVÉE from 11am to 7pm CENTRE

COMMERCIAL Access : TOUR RUE DU DÉPART Subway lines 4, 6, 12 et 13 : Montparnasse - Bienvenüe (Exit 2 - Place Bienvenüe)

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Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche & Villa Vassilieff are supported by: la Ville de Paris, la direction régionale des Affaires culturelles d’Île‑de-France – ministère de la Culture, la Région Île‑de-France and l’université Paris Diderot. Villa Vassilieff receives support from Pernod Ricard.

Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche & Villa Vassilieff are member of Tram, réseau art contemporain Paris Île‑de‑France, Arts en résidence ‑ réseau national and d.c.a. association française de développement des centres d’art.

Bétonsalon - Centre d’art et de recherche & Villa Vassilieff are établissements culturels de la Ville de Paris, labeled Centre d’art contemporain d’intérêt national by the ministry of Culture

Press contact : Villa Vassilieff

Tom Masson Chargé de communication with the support of : et des publics Villa Vassilieff Pernod Ricard Fellowship www.villavassilieff.net tél. : +33.6.70.26.53.39 tél. : +33.1.43.25.88.32 [email protected]